Yale lecturer James Sleeper wrote an op-ed about Mayor Ed Koch for the New York Times this weekend and couldn’t resist the opportunity to unfairly bash the Tea Party.

Mark Finkelstein of News Busters reports.

New York Times Op-Ed Accuses Tea Party Of ‘Assaults On Public Officials’

Looks like liberals are still trying to peddle the discredited allegation that Tea Party members attacked black members of Congress.

The op-ed page of today’s New York Times contains a column by James Sleeper, a long-time left-wing activist, now a lecturer at Yale. The gist is the grudging respect that Sleeper came to have for Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who passed away two days ago. Sleeper writes of how as mayor, Koch wrestled to the ground a protester who had stormed the stage as he spoke and pelted him with eggs. Sleeper wrote that Koch’s asking the audience whether they wanted the other protesters removed looked demagogic at the time, “[b]ut not so much now, with Tea Party heckling and assaults on public officials.” More after the jump.

Just which “Tea Party assaults on public officials”? Sleeper never says. Could he be referring to the alleged incident in which Tea Party protesters supposedly used the N-word toward members of the Congressional Black Caucus and spat on them? Those that have followed the story know that no one has ever stepped forward to produce any evidence thereof and claim the $100,000 prize that Andrew Breitbart offerred.

Sleeper should put up or shut up—and the Times should have exercised editorial judgement before permitting Sleeper to recycle a baseless slur.